Innocence Project Strikes Again: Henry James Freed After 30 Years
By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
Thanks to the efforts of the New York-based Innocence Project, Henry James became the 273rd inmate in this country to be exonerated by DNA evidence. The first inmate exonerated by DNA came in 1989, and according to the Innocence Project, there have been 206 DNA exonerations since 2000. James, who was 20 years of age when arrested for the aggravated rape of a neighbor, served one month sigh of 30 years in the Louisiana prison system for that wrongful conviction. The average amount of time served by all the DNA exonerees is 13 years.
That Henry James is a free man today is nothing short of a miracle. James Trigg, director of the New Orleans chapter of the Innocence Project, spearheaded the release effort of James. It was a difficult effort, as Trigg told the AP, because it was believed that all the original evidence in the case was lost. Then in May 2010 a Jefferson Parish crime lab technician named Milton Dureau, who was working on another case, stumbled upon a “slide of evidence” which had been used in the James case. DNA testing of that evidence clearly established James’ innocence. Vanessa Potkin, a Senior Staff attorney with the Innocence Project, said after James’ exoneration:
“Far too often searches for DNA evidence in old cases come up empty handed, which is why the federal government set up the Bloodsworth grant program to help police crime labs catalogue evidence. New Orleans Parish has already taken advantage of this program, but as this case so clearly demonstrates, jurisdictions everywhere must do a better job of cataloguing evidence to help correct injustice.”
After exhausting all his legal appeals, James seemed destined to spend the rest of his life at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Then the Innocence Project and the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP believed his longstanding pleas of innocence and took up his freedom cause. This legal team filed a motion seeking DNA testing of the original “rape kit,” and while the Jefferson Parish crime lab was “cooperative,” the initial search for this evidence produced no results. A follow up search in February 2010 produced the same disheartening result. But then Dureau came across the “slide” evidence and the DNA test results released in September 2011 revealed James was, in fact, innocent as he had claimed all along.
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